Mario Vargas Llosa, PLAS Distinguished Visitor and winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in literature, will give a lecture on Monday, October 11 at 7:30pm in Richardson Auditorium at Princeton University. The lecture, Breve discurso sobre la cultura, is free and open to the public.
Acclaimed Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, who is spending this semester as the 2010 Distinguished Visitor in Princeton University’s Program in Latin American Studies, has been awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in literature. He also is a visiting lecturer in Princeton’s Program in Creative Writing and the Lewis Center for the Arts.
The Princeton Bulletin just ran an article on Mario Vargas Llosa’s semester in Princeton. You can read it here.
Há dois anos, o endereço profissional da professora de literatura
brasileira Marília Librandi Rocha ficava em Vitória da Conquista, na
Universidade Estadual do Sudoeste da Bahia (Uesb). Desde janeiro de
2009, Marília atende em sua sala na Universidade de Stanford, na
Califórnia. Se no interior do Brasil se sentia imersa numa realidade
difícil, de repente viu-se transportada para uma situação bem diferente:
tornou-se a maior referência do país para seus alunos e colegas
americanos. “Sou a única representante do Brasil aqui”, conta Marília,
por telefone. Doutora em literatura comparada na Universidade de São
Paulo (USP), ela trabalhou quatro anos na Uesb até ser convidada por
Stanford.
Mario Vargas Llosa, one of the most important contemporary authors, will be spending the fall semester in Princeton. He will be teaching a seminar on Borges for PLAS and a creative writing workshop for the Lewis Center. On October 11, at 7:30 pm, he will give a public lecture in Richardson Auditorium.
In a recent conversation about Brazilian culture, Schwarcz, who spent last semester at PLAS, said:
It is strange how nowadays Brazil has a new image coming from abroad. We used to be seen as “exotics”; a country of Capoeira (a Brazilian form of martial art), Candomblé (a syncretic African religion), Carnaval, and the “Mulatas.” Now we continue to be viewed as exotic, but the exoticism has a new ingredient: violence, even a new aesthetics of violence, mainly in the way Brazil is portrayed in contemporary films, like City of God. The fascination with favelas among many people outside Brazil is ambiguous. On the one hand, favelas are seen as violent communities, subject to violent leaders outside the authority of the state. On the other, they are just “different”–scenes of a culture outside the dominant culture, with its own special way of partying, dancing, playing soccer.